Why just write poems when you can write better ones? This course is built on the notion that the most exciting writing begins after the first draft. It is specifically for folks who believe that writing poems just to express oneself is like using the Internet just for email. After all, poetry can change the way you and your readers think of the world and its inhabitants; it can break new ground for language; turn a blank sheet of paper into a teeming concert of voices and music.
Though any of us may have the potential to make that happen, having an understanding of how several tools of poetic composition can be used (and audaciously “mis-used”) gives you more ways to try (and if we do this right, we might surprise ourselves most of all).
We'll cover key poetic terms and devices by studying poems by a handful of modern and contemporary poets and then get a chance to try our own hand at writing new poem drafts from a select number of prompts. Throughout the course you will have the opportunity to workshop your poem drafts and get feedback on your work, working towards a more polished poem.

AS

This course provides brilliant explanations delivered in an extremely entertaining manner and incredible prompts that make the process of writing poetry extremely amusing. I recommend it 100%.

GM

Jan 13, 2016

Filled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled Star

I loved it. I truly enjoyed my time through this course. Excellent teacher who knows his stuff. Thank-you for this writing and educational opportunity for me to jump-start my muse again.

À partir de la leçon

Introduction and the Poetic Line

Poetry orchestrates its music, arguments, tensions, and environment via arrangements of language into lines and stanzas. This week we’ll address the importance of the line break, perhaps the most conspicuous, signature tool in the poet’s toolkit. Do you break more for sound, for sense, visual effect, shape, a mix of several? We’ll participate in several line break exercises and remix found poems. Also: prepare for your first quiz and a fun first writing prompt.

Enseigné par

Douglas Kearney

Assistant Professor

Transcription

Brooks' poem uses lines and stanzas to a really powerful effect. Those breaks that come at the end of the line create a kind of a hanging, and it's important that when you read a poem, you really do your best to honor the line breaks. One of the great tools, as we said earlier of the poem, is where it breaks its line. Think about it as a way of composing the musicality of the poem. Without those line breaks, we have a poem that goes: We real cool, we left school, we lurk late, we strike straight, we sing sin, we thin gin, we jazz June, we die soon. Which is an extraordinarily different poem, than what we have with We Real Cool, as Gwendolyn Brooks wrote it. Now, keeping in mind that line and stanza orchestrate the poem's musicality, and its flow of information, pay attention to the poems that you read. Pay attention to each other's poems. And make sure that you are honoring that music. Because as it does with Gwendolyn Brooks' work, sometimes, much of the effect of the understanding of the poem is based upon how it breaks. Similar to a pool game, it's all in the break.